The American Waze

When Waze tells you to go left on Buendia, for instance, you can almost feel the software struggling to cope with the word phonetically, giving its best American approximation: ‘Boo-En-DYE-A…’

In the new Oscar-bait movie The Theory of Everything, physicist Stephen Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne) gripes at first when he’s given a speech-generating device to communicate from his wheelchair. “Does it only come in American?” he complains to his wife, Jane.

I get the feeling some Filipinos feel that way about Waze, the popular phone app that helps people navigate Manila’s traffic tangles. Especially when the program utters the names of local streets.

“In 300 meters take a left on A-Peas-A-Bull Street,” the reasonable American voice — she’s called “Samantha” — instructed our driver in Qiuezon City the other day.

Of course, anyone who lives here knows that “A-Peas-A-Bull” is actually Apacible (pronounced “AH-pa-SI-blay”), and it’s quite easy to amuse, say, a Filipino driver by subjecting him to bastardized pronunciations of Filipino words.

JP Rizal, for instance, will be rendered by Samantha as “J-P RYE-zall.”

Pedro Gil becomes, in the voice of the disembodied American GPS maiden, “Pedro Gill.” As in a fish’s gill.

Santolan Avenue becomes “SAN-to-LIN,” not “San-TOL-an.”

Katipunan morphs into “Kat-Eh-PEW-Nan.”

And so on.

Are we Americans really this clueless about pronouncing foreign words and names?

Probably.

Let’s face it, Filipino names can contain up to five or six syllables, strings of recurring consonants that can pose a real tongue twister to non-Filipinos. The only longish names that Americans are used to reciting are Irish ones like “McGillicuddy” or “McConaughey” (or, increasingly, Greek ones like “Galifinakis”).

And while Waze has become a driving necessity, — used in dozen of countries to help foreigners and locals navigate — it does have a somewhat American slant to it, even though it was originally created in Israel. The Israeli inventors sought seed money and quickly expanded Waze to Palo Alto, California before the company was purchased by Google for $1.1 billion in 2013. Basically, it’s a location-based service for smartphones and other electronic gadgets that uses downloaded maps from each country. And the maps are fairly accurate and detailed — it’s just the pronunciations of street names that can throw you for a loop.

It’s not so much the complete mangling of street names like “Ramon Mag-SAY-SAY” that makes you think Americans never venture outside of Main Street USA; it’s more the emphasis on certain syllables (which, I confess, throws even me, at times) that can turn a navigation session into a laugh session.

When Waze tells you to go left on Buendia, for instance, you can almost feel the software struggling to cope with the word: trying to figure it out phonetically, and giving its best American approximation: “In 200 meters, turn right on Boo-En-DYE-A…”

Close, but no cigar.

Why is this? Why does Waze speak like an American tourist consulting a foreign phrase book badly?

In general, I’ve noticed Americans tend to lay emphasis on the first syllable of words — like “IN-novative,” whereas Filipinos tend to push the second or middle syllable — thus, “in-NOV-a-tive,” which is kind of more British than American.

But of course, there are dozens of Waze voices available for download, so if you don’t want to subject yourself to the (pleasant if clueless) tones of Samantha, you can opt for, say, Ichabod Crane (a rather starchy New England pedagogue’s voice), or download Elvis Presley, or Boy Band (for UK streets), or even Mickey Mouse giving you directions in Portuguese. (I kid not. Try it!)

In fact, there are loads of Hollywood celebrities who may soon offer their (American) voices to Waze traffic navigation, including Drive Along star Kevin Hart. Others on the Waze wish list include Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson and Clint Eastwood (who we might imagine asking: “You could take EDSA to Roxas at this time of day… Do you feel lucky, punk? Well? Do you…?”)

No word, though, on whether Stephen Hawking’s voice will be made available.

Listening to Samantha struggle with “G. Reyes” (which she renders as “G-Rays”) might make you think that most Americans have never ventured across the border to Mexico or even the Bahamas, let alone to the faraway Philippines. You’d think they haven’t been exposed to some smattering of Spanish language on a fairly regular basis in many parts of the US where loads of Spanish-speaking people reside. But they have. And many of us do travel, and live, and work abroad.

So I had to come to a very different conclusion about Samantha, which is that she is choosing to pronounce words incorrectly, not out of ignorance, but to offer basic phonetic assistance to the vernacularly challenged among us. I mean, I’m sure most foreigners who come here aren’t instantly aware of the right way to pronounce “Ortigas Avenue” — which Samantha tells us is “ORT-igas.” So a little stressing of the first syllable might help ease the transition.

(Another funny thing is that Filipinos love to laugh whenever we Americans try to pronounce Tagalog words and muck it up badly. It’s hilarious to most Filipinos when I try to say a word like “nawawala” and add a few extra “wawas” because my tongue trips over itself and forgets where’s it going. It’s kind of like the way we Americans secretly snicker whenever Filipinos describe loading their “luggages” or politicians who “cuddle” criminals. Language is a funny thing, right?)

And it definitely amuses Filipino drivers when they hear a high-tech electronic gadget that fails to get the simplest Filipino names right. It causes some Pinoy drivers to release a scornful little chuckle from deep in the back of the throat. So much so, that my wife tried to switch Waze to a Spanish-speaking prompt, in the hopes that the street names, at least, would sound more correct. (They did, but we couldn’t decipher the rest of the Spanish directions and quickly switched back to good old Samantha.)

It also made me wonder: does Samantha’s awkward accent cause amusement in other foreign countries? Somehow, I shudder to think what Samantha would come up with in, say, Paris, guiding American tourists to “Champs Why-Lessy” or “the LOW-Vree” instead of its most famous shopping avenue and art museum in the world. Though my experience with Parisians makes me suspect that English-speaking Samantha would be totally banned from the City of Light. French only, please.